Legislation And Practice Of The Minimum Employment Age

Child labor is a common social problem in the world and can not be ignored. These children are frequently engaged in the work which does not match the children’s Physical development level and blocks their chance of education and development. Some of them even do the work in dangerous environment and do not have the labor protection. In this situation, children’s right to life、to development、to protection can not be guaranteed.The International Community and all of the nations have taken many measures to solve the problem, and the quantity of children workers has reduced gradually. But, the quantity of children workers is still big according to the report of The International Labor Organization. The situation of child labor is still serious. In our country, with the development of economy and society and the implementation of Nine-year compulsory education, the quantity of children workers in our country has reduced significantly under the efforts of our government to eliminate child labor. But the phenomenon of child labor still exists and will exist for a long time. And, the current situation for protecting children’s rights has to be seriously worried. It is critically significant for the future development of our nation to improve everyone’s consciousness on the protection of child labor and strengthen children’s ability for themselves-protection.Since the 1970s, in the promotion of globalization, the phenomenon of child labor starts to attract the International Community’s attention. In 1998, the International Labor Organization took "Effective to eliminate child labor" as one of the four cardinal principles that all of the nations must respect、promote and make true. To eliminate child labor became the consensus of the international community and one of the important content of labor law in every country.Our country’s attitude on child labor is to forbid firmly and blow severely. At present, our country has been formed in the legal system which is on the basis of constitution, in order to labor laws minor protection law、Compulsory education law and other professional laws and the regulations banning the use of child labor, and makes criminal law as supplement. But in fact, the processing to child labor of our country focuses on labor law filed and the role played by the other department law is very small. Labor law is the main department law to regulate child labor. In child protection and child labor regulation, it is correct that we place the particular emphasis on labor law. However, child labor is not just a problem in the filed of labor law. It also involves many aspects, such as economy、education and so on. Education has direct and natural connection with child labor. Child labor in some sense is that children who should receive education in school appear in the labor market. To guarantee the education for children can effectively reduce the number of children workers. The implementation of the nine-year compulsory education has made a significant reduction in the number of children workers in our country.To the problem of child labor, however, our country has neglected the important factor of education. On one hand, the education law’s rules to child labor are too general and lack of implementation possibility. On the other hand, rules to regulate child labor in labor law lack of coordination with the education law and do not attach importance to be adapted to our country’s education practice. These cause our country’s labor law loopholes in part of child labor is difficult to deal with emergence of various and new situations in practice. Specifically, the problems of child labor protection and child labor laws in our country are mainly concentrated in the standard of minimum age of employment. Minimum employment age is the key element to define child labor and protect these children workers. To design a reasonable and tight system for minimum age of employment is of great importance.Through the comparative analysis between foreign legislation and the legislation of our country and the research for our country’s education situation, this paper discusses the problem that the rules of minimum employment age in our law are reasonable or not in contrast to foreign legislation and the education situation of our country. This paper will try to find out the problems in our legislation of minimum employment age and come up with some solutions.